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I had a call from eBay today. A very pleasant lady with a Brit accent called to inform me of changes eBay is implementing. I already knew they were going to offer fixed price listings with a flat rate insertion fee of 35¢, and that started today. You can now list any number of items in a fixed price listing for up to thirty days at that rate. I typically pay $3 insertion fees for some of my items, so as a seller this is a boon. But as an affiliate it stinks.

It's stinks in more ways than the obvious also. There will be so much CRAP clogging up the works buyers will become frustrated very easily.

Old Willy down the road a piece can just keep relisting his beer can collection over and over again with a 20K BIN for less than 5 bucks a year in the hopes of getting a pool and retiring the slip-n-slide.

For sure! The search results will be ridiculous. I won't be using the thirty day listing anytime soon. Why would I want my products to display thirty days down the list? I haven't checked yet, but what happens to store listings that would display at the end of a thirty item search result? There may no longer be search results that short!

Ah, but the vast majority of our sales are made up of FVF, and not the original listing fee. Even before you could start auctions at $.35 or $.50, but it was the FVF that made the sale worth it to the affiliate.

A lot of the thing eBay are now doing are going to hurt the seller and the affiliate, they seem focused on the buyers. This sound like a good policy, until a while down the line they have all buyers and very few sellers! Logically this will mean nothing for the buyers to buy! POOR EBAY!!
Maureen

Last edited by maureenmclean; September 17th, 2008 at 04:57 AM.
Reason: I added a link forgetting it is against your rules

A lot of the thing eBay are now doing are going to hurt the seller and the affiliate, they seem focused on the buyers. This sound like a good policy, until a while down the line they have all buyers and very few sellers! Logically this will mean nothing for the buyers to buy! POOR EBAY!!
Maureen

A lot of longtime buyers are frustrated by the changes too though.

Let's take me, for example.

I hate best match. I'm annoyed that it now takes me a minimum of 3 clicks, and usually it takes more, to do the same search that I could have done in one click a few years ago. I could swear that when they first rolled out best match they had a way for you to set your default searches. I set mine to "ending soonest", but they didn't stay set that way. Now I can't even find a way to make my default search "ending soonest". Either that option is gone, or well hidden. I emailed ebay about this and got a 'bot response that didn't address my question.

I'm ultra-frustrated with ebay's new "suggestions" which somehow keep overriding what I am trying to search for. They keep switching my search to what they seem to think I want instead of giving me what I really do want.

I'm also annoyed that I get a different version of the site every time I log in.

Ebay used to be a fun buying experience, but it is nothing more than a big headache to use ebay any more. Perhaps new buyers might find these changes helpful? I have no idea, it's great if they do, but a lot of longtime ebayers- both buyers and sellers- are complaining.

As an affiliate, I am glad I found some new sites to promote. I am thinking of selling my antiques/collectibles sites to someone who has more patience for ebay than I do.

It's stinks in more ways than the obvious also. There will be so much CRAP clogging up the works buyers will become frustrated very easily.

Old Willy down the road a piece can just keep relisting his beer can collection over and over again with a 20K BIN for less than 5 bucks a year in the hopes of getting a pool and retiring the slip-n-slide.

LOL @ this...you make a very good point.

Funny thing though. The way the search used to work, you'd be unlikely to find ol' Willy's beer can collection unless you specifically searched for it. Nowadays you never know. Best match is likely to show that can collection to anyone doing searches for baseball card collections, debt collection, beer pong tables, ETC.

My husband was looking for a bike helmet and best match kept showing him football helmets. He did a search for some bike wheels, and best match showed him some wheels for office chairs. Truly aggravating!

I have dozens of saved searches that I've had for years and use all the time. Every single, solitary one of them is busted in the "new search experience".

RSS sorting, which is part of the search functionality, has been busted for weeks. Tens of thousands of BANS stores are screwed right now. Some are starting to be de-indexed likely because every page is now quadruple content since all the sorts are ending first now.

I have dozens of saved searches that I've had for years and use all the time. Every single, solitary one of them is busted in the "new search experience".

RSS sorting, which is part of the search functionality, has been busted for weeks. Tens of thousands of BANS stores are screwed right now. Some are starting to be de-indexed likely because every page is now quadruple content since all the sorts are ending first now.

I see this as a HUGE opportunity. If ebay are making the best products and deals more difficult to find, we as affiliates have the chance to move in, make it easier and reap the rewards.

What am I missing here?

This line of thinking was part of the reason that I jumped ship as an ebay seller and became an affiliate to start with. If all other things would roughly stay the same, I think this logic is basically sound. There is opportunity, yes, if you are willing to try to readjust your business strategy every ten minutes to accommodate ebay's latest changes (and changes to the changes, and changes to the changed changes). It has always been like this as far back as I can remember, and I have been ebaying for a long time now. In the end, it becomes very necessary to calculate the opportunity cost. Is there better opportunity elsewhere? I suppose it depends on your niche(s), your traffic, and all other potential opportunities on your table.

Originally Posted by bobby131313

Yeah.... good luck with that.

I have dozens of saved searches that I've had for years and use all the time. Every single, solitary one of them is busted in the "new search experience".

No one should have to switch 50 or even hundreds of sites because something is broken.

If you have a constructive solution, please let us know.

Agreed. To my way of thinking, changes to ebay's search are a much bigger concern than fees are. Unfortunately, I don't have a constructive solution to offer (other than maybe considering shareasale if you can find a good fit merchant / product-wise???? Which was my solution on a couple of dozen pages I just finished switching over. Might not work for you, depending, but worked for me for those particular pages anyway.) At any rate, I just wanted to express sympathy.

For those of you who may doubt that search really has been broken, see here: